How Playing An Instrument Can Tremendously Improve Your Brain

Beethoven intuitively knew what recent research has discovered; that music benefits the brain.

Moreover, music is thought to promote positive brain activity more than any other pursuit. “Playing music is the brain’s equivalent of a full-body workout.” writes Maria Popova, blogger and critic.

Playing a musical instrument engages many areas of the brain

Playing a musical instrument requires the use of almost every area of the brain at the same time. It engages the visual, auditory and motor cortices. Playing music has also been found to increase the size and activity in the corpus callosum; the bridge that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. When this area is large messages can be transferred across the brain at a faster rate and through a variety of routes. This can result in an increased ability to resolve problems in creative and efficient ways.

Musicians have enhanced memory functions

Musicians have improved memory capacities. They can make, store and recover recollections at a more noteworthy speed and all the more capably then the vast majority.Musicians seem to use their highly connected brains to label specific memories with “tags”; studies have shown. These may take the form of emotional tags, conceptual tags, audio tags and contextual tags. The procedure appears to work to some degree like a web crawler. The performer can rapidly discover what he or she is searching for as everything is plainly marked and put into classes.

Children who received music tuition display superior reading skills

In a review distributed in the Journal of Psychology of Music, it was demonstrated that youngsters who were presented to a multi-year program of music educational cost performed better when they were requested that preform subjective perusing errands than their non-musically prepared associates. The creators of the review, Joseph M Piro and Camilo Ortiz from Long Island University, USA, contemplated youngsters in two US primary schools. One school prepared youngsters in music and one didn't. Piro and Ortiz set out to test their speculation that kids who got console direction would perform better on measures of vocabulary and verbal sequencing than understudies who did not get any melodic guideline. The creators express that there are similarities between the way individuals decipher music and dialect. They take note of that "on the grounds that neural reaction to music is a generally conveyed framework inside the cerebrum… . it would not be nonsensical to expect that some preparing systems for music and dialect practices, specifically perusing, situated in both sides of the equator of the mind would cover."

The results of the study showed that the music-learning group had significantly better vocabulary and verbal sequencing scores than did the control group (the non-music-learning students).

Music training boosts math scores

In a study conducted by Martin F. Gardiner and his colleagues at the Center for the Study of Human Development at Brown University it was discovered that the Kodaly method of music training had a positive influence on the math skills of first and second graders. The Kodaly method involves rhythm games and learning to sing songs.

Debra Viadero states in her article, “Music on the Mind,” that “At the end of seven months, the students getting the specialized musical training were doing the same or slightly better in reading than their counterparts in the control group. But in math they zoomed ahead of their peers — even though they had started out slightly behind.” She added that, “Mr. Gardiner believes the boost comes in part because music aids children’s understanding of such concepts as number lines. …’Do is less than re, and re is less than mi.’ On a keyboard, the progression may be even easier to grasp.”

Early music training can promote growth in certain areas of the brain

Studies suggest that if a child begins music training early (before age seven) they can promote greater growth in certain areas of their brain. Reserachers in Germany found the region of the brain responsible for perfect pitch; the planum temporale (this is an area in the left hemisphere which is associated with speech).

“Using MRI, the German team looked at the planum temporale in thirty nonmusicians and in thirty professional musicians, eleven with perfect pitch and nineteen without. In the musicians with perfect pitch, the planum temporale was twice as big as in either the nonmusicians or the musicians lacking perfect pitch.” Diamond, M. and Hopson, J. wrote in their article entitled, “Magic trees of the mind: How to nurture your child’s intelligence, creativity, and healthy emotions from birth to adolescence.”

In essence, playing a musical instrument can do wonders for your brain. As John A. Logan said, “Music’s the medicine of the mind.”